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Thanks for visiting Consumerist.com. As of October 2017, Consumerist is no longer producing new content, but feel free to browse through our archives. Here you can find 12 years worth of articles on everything from how to avoid dodgy scams to writing an effective complaint letter. Check out some of our greatest hits below, explore the categories listed on the left-hand side of the page, or head to CR.org for ratings, reviews, and consumer news.

altria

Putting smokeless tobacco in your mouth is one thing, putting smokeless tobacco containing metal fragments in your mouth is another. After receiving several reports of customers finding metal objects in their tobacco cans, tobacco giant Altria is recalling several of its most popular brands. [More]

Seventeen years after federal prosecutors sued the tobacco industry, a full decade after a court ruled that Big Tobacco’s biggest players had maintained an illegal racketeering enterprise in violation of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization [RICO] Act, and nearly seven years since they lost their appeal in that case, these companies are still dragging their feet creating the public warning ads they were ordered to make many, many years ago. The judge who has had to preside over this drawn-out ordeal has had enough. [More]

For more than 5 years, the FDA has had authority to regulate tobacco products, and last month, the agency issued guidance to the tobacco industry about when cigarette makers must seek FDA approval on changes to packaging. The country’s largest tobacco businesses now believe the FDA is overstepping its authority and violates their rights to free expression. [More]

Tassimo, a Kraft brand, is probably best known as the “those single-serve coffee brewers that aren’t Keurig.” Anita has one, and she received an e-mail from Kraft offering two free packages of coffee if she registered her brewer. Yay, free coffee! So she did just that, only to hit a brick wall of customer disservice. Not what you expect after buying a coffeemaker that retails for $140. [More]

Back in June we noted that the FDA was about to get a lot more say over the tobacco industry if the Senate approved a new bill. Well they did, and so yesterday the FDA flexed its new muscles by banning fruit, herb, spice, and candy flavorings from cigarettes. That’s right: clove cigarettes were just banned by the FDA, which is bad news for gothy teens and great news for everyone else.

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